


Small Insistent Things

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 21:09:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-movie, established relationship. As a side-effect of his one-man jaunt into the hivemind of the kaiju, Newt Geiszler suffers from recurrent nosebleeds. Hermann Gottlieb has a front-row seat and continues to be a professional worrywart!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Insistent Things

They've grown so comfortable that sometimes, in the night, they will both drift awake at the exact moment.  
Neither speaks. Newt is usually the one to roll over towards him, hands warm and always, always slightly sweaty on his skin. He thinks of small insistent clinging (tenacious) things--geckos and cats--as Newt's hand slips deftly into his sleeping pants.  
The back of his head hits the pillow. He did not recall even sitting up that far, but it feels like he falls a long way, until Newt's hand closes around his cock and the universe--his universe--shivers, taut with expectation.  
The nerves in only one of his legs still work right, but he more than compensates with the other, his toes biting into the soft foam of the mattress beneath their flannel winter sheets, and his mouth is open, gasping.  
Newt's fingers are quick and adept, and Hermann figured out almost immediately that he is completely ambidextrous, his grip with either hand perfect. This time, Newt does not switch, but he speeds up, fingers tightening into a band that Hermann can feel the head of his cock popping in and out of, slick, wet--  
When he comes, he swallows the sound and releases only the breath, every nerve white-hot, and he feels like the synapses firing, exploding into tiny mushroom clouds inside his head.  
"Yeah," Newt says, softly, against his throat, and Hermann can feel his erection through the paper-thin boxers he wears to bed, pressed tight against his thigh. He can't properly reciprocate--neither of his arms are positioned right--but he nuzzles and then kisses Newt's forehead until he tips his head back.  
And tastes blood.  
"Newton!" he says, and sits up too fast.  
"Sorry! The leg! I didn't mean--"  
"Not ME! What's--" and he's flapping his hand around in the dark, searching for the desk-lamp on his side of the bed for a moment before he finds the chain-pull and yanks it, hard.  
Yellow light washes across their bed. He snaps his glasses open and slides them on, still breathing too fast.  
Newton is sitting--well, crouching--next to him, unfocused eyes wide and nervous. Blood is streaming out of both his nostrils, smeared across his cheek and chin where Hermann kissed him.  
Dread spikes low and hot in his belly.  
"Your nose is bleeding again," he murmurs.  
Newton makes a noise and touches his upper lip--flinching when he draws his hand away coated in the vivid, brilliant red.  
"Shit," he says. Then, he looks at Hermann and frowns. "Aw, SHIT."  
"What?"  
"Your shirt..." he says, and taps at his own collar.  
Hermann sighs. "It's only a shirt. Bit of a dunk in some ice-water will take it right out. Let's get you taken care of," he says.  
He takes his cane down from the rung of the headboard where he hangs it and levers himself upright, feeling sticky and ridiculous but WORRIED.  
He is in the bathroom first, slapping on the lights and pulling their first-aid kit out of their (very well-stocked, he thought, with another spike of nervous dread) medicine cabinet. Newton follows him, stanching the flow as best he can with his own t-shirt--one of his ratty comic-book-hero ones, and Hermann feels a twinge of fondness when he realizes offhandedly that it must be the ugly Batman one, or he'd have sprinted for the bathroom to save it. He can see about six inches of Newt's exposed belly, bristling with soft fuzz, and Hermann sighs through his nose and wonders if he ought to be feeling such a mix of worry and affection in the same swoop.  
Newton sits on the toilet lid and leans back slightly, as Hermann is pulling out gauze and eyedrops, trying hard not to overthink.  
But if he sees the tiny corona of red around Newton's iris, they both know it's another round of hospital visits, and one inevitable step closer to--but he quashes the thought.  
One of them has to keep a level head.

"We're lucky neither of us suffered true aneurysms," Hermann says, and then he is bending over Newt's upturned face, open robe wafting his smell towards him.  
Except Newt mostly smells the red-smelling tang of blood--muddy and thick. He knows his nose must be streaming because Hermann is wiping his chin, first, then his lip, and holding a folded bundle of tissue there.  
"I did post-experimentation tests," Newt says, and tries to feel like a big kid, except Hermann tuts softly above him and he feels so YOUNG. And also rather sad.  
"Everything shows I'll BE fine. Eventually. It's not like I was, you know, piloting a jaeger solo or whatever. It was probably just that the equipment was old."  
If by 'old', you meant 'assembled out of literal rubbish he'd scrounged from the bins in the tech development corridor', then yes, Hermann thinks.  
The thought runs back and forth between the two of them, but neither has to say it. Part of Hermann's mind had been heat-set into Newt's, to the point that he could anticipate it even up to Hermann's TIMING.  
"Yeah, okay, it was old AND probably broken AND I didn't have any training, BUT," Newt said, and stopped. He could FEEL that Hermann is about to say something.  
"Dear boy, you must realize a literal torrent of blood is coming out of your face, and you talking isn't making it any easier for me to keep it from your clothes." Hermann sounds pleasantly amused, and only a little tired.  
"These are becoming a rather common happenstance, anyway," he says.  
Newt has to fight off a yawn. "Kinda wish they WEREN'T. Ugh, of all the pains."  
"...I used to get them quite often, when I was a boy. You...sort of grow accustomed to them." Hermann says, softly.  
Newt knows how he hates talking about his past, how he never does it unless he feels he has to. Unless he's worried that their conversation might be their last important one. Newt knows not to press for more than Hermann offers.  
Instead, he reaches out one-handed and rubs Hermann's arm, smiling.  
"Thanks, Hermy," he says, and laughs when Hermann looks amused AND annoyed.  
"Why DO you keep calling me that," he says, looking away, trying not to smile, and Newt laughs more.  
"'Cause YOU can't call me Newt. One of us needs a nickname," he says.  
Hermann chuckles a little, shaking his head.  
"I'm changing the tissue," he says.  
"Right," Newt says, and tilts his head back.  
A moment later Hermann is pressing a fresh handful under his nose, his long thin fingers gentle on the curve of the back of Newt's skull as he urges him forward.  
Finally (two tissue changes later) the flow tapers off. Newt watches as Hermann cuts two identical lengths of gauze and hands them to him, and very diplomatically does not watch as he stuffs the gauze up his still-trickling nose.  
Hermann washes his hands in the sink, and Newt sees the way he nervously wrings each of his fingers individually, first with soap to clean them, then again to dry them. He doesn't say anything.  
Hermann is leaning over him with eyedrops, next, pausing with visibly baited breath before he gently pulls down Newt's eyelid. He's so easy to read--if you know how, Newt ammends--he can SEE him relax.  
"Your eye is all right," Hermann says, slightly gruff and relieved at once.  
Newt huffs a little laugh. "I told you! My tests show I should be fine."  
He pauses. "WE should be fine. You...you jumped in there, too, you know."  
"Yes, but YOU did it first. Alone. I am allowed to worry about you, am I not?"  
"Not if it means interrupting an orgasm! Man, if that was ME--"  
Hermann interrupts gently. "If I'd been the one this was happening to, you'd have broken one of YOUR legs trying to get to the phone to call a hospital."  
And then Hermann is smiling at him again, that amused, half-crooked smile, and Newt is just happy they're there together, and they're both all right, and they're going to BE all right.  
"I know I'm really gross right now," he says, "But I really want a hug."  
And then Hermann laughs, actually laughs, and Newt is grinning even though he can feel the crusty dried blood rimming his nostrils. He shucks off his shirt and throws it into the sink and rises unsteadily to his feet, his arms sliding around Hermann's waist.  
He's all right. They're all right. Newt knows this, in the back of his mind, in the whole brand-spanking-new section chock-full of Hermann's borrowed memories, in his own mind. But he knows he doesn't have to say this.  
One of them has to keep a level head.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fic fill for a Pacific Rim Kinkmeme request!  
> the prompt is here:  
> http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/350.html?thread=50782#t50782  
> i hope you enjoyed reading it.


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